Round 1: 0-2 loss. I lose due to bad beats here, mulliganing into a one-land hand both games.

Round 2: 2-1 win. The win here was over a former National champ, who apparently has never beaten me before, as he shook his head commenting “Roy Tang, hindi ko matalo… ” Strangely, I only remember beating him one other time…

Round 3: 0-2 loss. Several misplays here. More on that leter.

Round 4: 2-1 win. The guy was a bit green, we had to call a judge several times over minor issues.

2-2. Maybe I could still get a decent finish… just need to win 3 in a row.

Round 5: 0-2 loss. Damn it!

So I drop. Damn, I hate dropping, it makes me feel so incompetent at Magic. I know, it happens, bad beats etc. But in this case I really was incompetent. Learn from your mistakes right? The mistakes here were…

Not enough removal. Seriously, I should’ve probably at least splashed for the Tarfire and the Consuming Bonfire. That would’ve been a better choice than Rootgrapple. (To be fair, the Treefolk Instant actually took out Garuk for me. I still lost that game though.)

Being blinded by shiny stuff. I saw the 2 Goldmeadow Stalwarts and the Thoughtweft Trio and just had to go Kithkin. I saw the Timber Protector and just forced my treefolk in there. I don’t know if my second choice (UBR Faerie/Goblin) would have been better, but I definitely didn’t give enough consideration to the other cards. I forced the Kithkin/Treefolk build too much, trying to put in a lot of Kithkin to maximize the Stalwarts I ended up with too many 2/x dorks that didn’t do anything.

Not having a good plan.Yeah. Evasion guys would have been a good plan. A bunch of small Kithkin guys? Not so much. Even though I could get the awesome double Stalwart opening (I never did), it’s not consistent enough. Trying to win in Sealed by rushing small dudes isn’t a very reliable since it’s more likely for them to have midrange guys as well. I had a few fatties yeah, but in n environment with 2 common tappers, it wasn’t very effective. Which reminds me…

Not having a way to kill tappers!

Not paying attention to game state. In one game, I had a creature with a Stalactite equipped and I attacked into Protection from Elf guy. I had several misplays in round 3 where we stalled with like 15 creatures on each side of the board. My opponent put down a Mulldrifter and equipped a Runed Stalactite, while he had an Imperious Perfect in play. I didn’t realize until too late that it got +1/+1 from the Perfect. My opponent wanted to create an elf token and he was searching for a good item to use. I gave him one of my dice to use and only later realized that I was actually using it to track my own Kithkin tokens! By then it was too late as I would’ve lost anyway on the next alpha strike, but maybe having those tokens on my side could have convinced me to make my own alpha strike as it was a close game.

Impatience.In round 3 again, I was facing a creature stall on game one and I made a massive mistake, attacking with two Treefolk and two Springjacks hoping I could get at least one double-strike off the clash. Obviously I got none, and I lost two Springjacks for nothing. I should’ve just waited out the stall instead of being impatient.

I make so many mistakes like this which make me question why some people think I’m a good limited player. I’m not — I just had a good streak for a while that brought my rating up to 1800 but it will surely drop down now. I’m glad I decided not to even consider going to GP:Bangkok as I’m obviously not yet ready. Luckily there are 4 Kuala Lumpur PTQs scheduled for the Philippines, all of them Lorwyn Sealed of course, giving me a chance to learn from my mistakes and make a comeback.

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